Hopeless Wanderer
by mholub00
Summary: He has a guitar. (It's just one of those nights.) (One-shot)


The second time she wakes up, she decides it's just one of those nights.

One of those nights where no one is sleeping and the people who are shouldn't be: it's really not fair. Where the sky is cloudless and it's too bright to be three in the morning and her mind just won't shut up from the thinking, always from the thinking, and the contemplating and the trying to figure things out and she wishes it would stop, just stop.

All she wants, really, is two seconds of silence from the buzzing, but she could go for a warm cup of tea- that kind they had that one time in Prague, if she's being specific- and a good book and a blanket as well. But only if the buzzing would stop.

What she needs is to move, she decides, so after the second time she wakes and labels it as one of those nights, she stands, pulls a discarded t-shirt on over her sports bra, leaves the non-darkness of her room behind.

_Her room_.

She likes calling it that.

The apartment itself is a perfect size, with the two bedrooms and the bathroom, and the kitchen-ish-living-area all mushed in the front, but it only has the one hallway between the doors and she needs to wander, not pace. Wander from floor to floor, from environment to environment, with cold tile and empty room upon empty room that the SHIELD base always offered.

She stands in the doorway and decides not to contemplate it anymore, not to think about things that shouldn't require thinking, and settle for the pacing instead.

Besides, if she were to go outside she could run into people and that's not what she needs right now. In the confines of the apartment it's just her and the buzzing and Clint who's asleep-

Except he's not.

She should have known since it's one of those nights, yet she blinks a few times to make sure she's not imagining _his _bedroom light being on.

And she's right, because she can see, she reminds herself, and lights are real, and she's also sure that's the sound of a guitar floating through the air.

Curious now, because though she knows he _can_ play the guitar she has never _heard_ him play it, she readjusts the path of her wandering to move down the hallway until she's standing silently outside his door, quieting her breathing and blocking out the buzzing as best she can so she can listen.

The surprise when she realizes she knows the song is expressed in a gasp, and the guitar immediately stops.

Figuring she doesn't have much to lose and factoring in the pressing silence that is filling the apartment now, she opens the door.

He's sitting on the bed, guitar poised to be played and hand hovering over the strings, shirtless but wearing sweatpants, a combination she finds strange but doesn't comment on, and his eyebrows are raised at her in a way that starts the thinking and the contemplating up again.

"Hold me fast, 'cause I'm a hopeless wanderer," she whispers and he stares at her some more, taking in her overall disheveled appearance and deciding it's just one of those nights.

After a second of nothing, she repeats the line and he lets a smile break across his face because she knows the song, so he strums the guitar again and slowly the music resurfaces as a recognizable tune.

She hums along with it, closing her eyes and continuing her pacing until she manages to hit the bed, and it's there that she decides she moved enough for one of those nights, sitting down and watching him play.

When he stops, she shakes her head.

"Keep playing," she whispers, running a delicate finger over one of the strings.

Her eyes are still closed and he starts the song over again, half singing the lyrics but mostly watching her curl up on his bed as if there is no where she'd rather be.

Three minutes later, as the final cords echo through the small apartment, he thinks he could carry her to her room or sleep on the couch and finally decides to screw it because it's his bed, his room, and the effect of the night is wearing off.

Tired after several hours of not being so, he switches off the light for the fourth time that night and listening to her breath is like a whole other song.

It's one of those nights.


End file.
